Retro Review - Ninpen Manmaru
I will never cease to be surprised by the large number of games that I do not know of the PlayStation 1, there are many and there are a large part of them that were exclusive to Japan and never left their country of origin. However, the Sega Saturn was also another console whose catalog of video games (despite not being as spectacular as the catalog of PlayStation 1), has in its history also a lot of unknown games and many of them are also games that never left Japan, one of those games that I will talk about today, is so unknown, that at least I have not found an English translation patch, so I have no idea of the plot of this game, I only know that it is based on a fairly old anime, but being a 3D platformer and adventure game, this is an irrelevant aspect, as well as simple, it is quite basic but entertaining. (Since I didn't find out, and to be honest, I wasn't interested in researching about the plot of this game either, the "Story" section will be omitted).
Ninpen Manmaru is a game with 3D elements and although it is nothing spectacular, it is due to its 90's anime aesthetics focused for children and its great level of colors makes it look nice to the eye. It's not the best 3D you'll see in the few 3D games on the Sega Saturn, however, this game isn't bad at all. The design of our character is simple but very well done, as it is a nice looking penguin and is even a bit cute.
The scenarios, despite not having a high level of detail, you can not doubt that, with the low quality graphics that has this game, its developers managed to create decent scenarios, with striking details and decorations, so that each scenario that we go with our character (at least mostly) are pretty good. In addition to this, this game has scenarios with a fairly large size, not extremely, but surprisingly large, this being an aspect that surprised me when playing, I did not expect a game of this style to have very large scenarios, thus increasing its level of exploration.
Ninpen Manmaru surprisingly has a set of animations with a decent level of fluidity, the characters, despite not having a very varied set of animations, the few animations that the characters have move fairly quickly and do not look at all "rigid" or "robotic".
The soundtrack of Ninpen Manmaru represents what this game is: an adventure with a childish plot, with a lot of fun and colorful. So throughout this adventure we are going to hear melodies according to these aspects. Aspects that are quite well and are really very well composed melodies for each scenario and situation. The soundtrack of Ninpen Manmaru can be pigeonholed in a genre and that would be in the "tropical music", because as I mentioned, it has those cheerful rhythms that make you hum the melodies to the little time you're listening, really all this soundtrack fits very well with the childish and anime aesthetics of this game.
Ninpen Manmaru is a platform game, but unlike other similar games, in this game its mechanics are much more basic, since our purpose in this game is simply to get from point A to point B, to do this we must overcome obstacles, jump a lot on various platforms and dodge enemies. And yes, I said "dodge enemies", because this game does not have any way to eliminate the enemies that are on screen, we can only dodge them and prevent them from attacking us. This is a very rare aspect even for a children's game, because we do not have any way to defeat enemies, even we can not even defeat them with the most basic method of video games of this genre which is to jump on them.
As I mentioned, the main point of this game is to get from A to B, running and jumping through obstacles and enemies, but there will also be traps that will eliminate us immediately, so we must control our character very well. Each final stage of the scenario has a "battle" against a boss, but if our character does not have any kind of attack, how can we defeat it? Simple, the challenge to beat the final boss of each stage varies depending on the boss and for this we will face them in various challenges, from races, accumulate a greater amount of coins or simply dodge all their attacks in the estimated time.
Exploring the scenery we will find items that will help us to overcome obstacles more easily or reach the goal faster, as these items give the protagonist of the game greater speed or a greater jumping ability.
Ninpen Manmaru is one of those games that despite its shortcomings, it is still entertaining to at least have a good time playing it and being one of those very unknown games that never left Japan, it is worth playing it while having a coffee.
